Protesting central excise officials use Gandhigiri

Lucknow, March 1 (IANS) Junior officials of the central excise department here resorted to Gandhigiri and presented roses to the department’s chief commissioner, protesting alleged “discrimination” at the hands of the central government. Protesting superintendents from different parts of Uttar Pradesh walked into the chamber of the chief commissioner Rajesh Dhingra Friday and gave him roses together with their memorandum, seeking parity in pay scales with their counterparts in the direct taxes wing of the central revenue services.

The Association of Central Excise Officers has been demanding a better deal for quite some time.

The superintendents later held a meeting of their members outside the office building, emphasising that instead of resorting to agitations, they had decided to adopt Gandhigiri - Gandhian means of protest popularised by the film “Lage Raho Munnabhai” - to get their long-pending demands fulfilled.

“We are being discriminated against for years; our counterparts in the direct tax wings, including the income tax departments, were entitled to a higher grade of salary,” N.N. Lal, state secretary of All India Association of Central Excise Gazetted Executive Officers, told reporters Saturday.

Referring to the stagnation in their cadre, he lamented: “Most of us recruited directly as superintendents in the class II cadre retire without a single promotion while the lucky ones too do not get more than one promotion in their entire service length.”

He proposed a nationwide Gandhigiri movement to press for their demands.